Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen has a new, and expensive, hobby: shipwreck finder. He has just had his biggest triumph yet, discovering wreckage from the 1944 sinking of the cruiser USS Indianapolis, some 18,000ft deep in the Philippine Sea.
The cruiser was torpedoed just after finishing a top-secret mission to delver atomic bomb components to a Pacific island. Those parts were used in the bomb that flattened Hiroshima, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands, but shortening the war.
The ship’s sinking was not observed by other American forces, and no radio messages were received. Some 800 sailors of the 1186 aboard survived the sinking, but only 386 were found and rescued, after spending several days in the shark-infested water.
Allen has posted more pix and information on Twitter.
